AHMEDABAD: If you thought the comment by outgoing Infosys director V Balakrishnan — that the Aam Aadmi Party was the best start-up ever by an IITian — would push the best brains towards the winds of political change blowing across the country, pause to ponder. For, alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) already form the heavy artillery in Narendra Modi's armoury as he draws political strategy to capture power in Delhi.

But the Gujarat chief minister has now competition from AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, an IITian himself, who is finding support in premier institutes and among the urban, educated middle class — a constituency that Modi has been trying to get on board.

Last year, Modi started building an army of bright youths through his Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) initiative. This was in anticipation that much of the political battle would be fought in the theatre of the youth. Almost half of the 60-odd founder members of CAG are IITians. They quit from renowned organizations like Oracle, AT Kearney, JP Morgan, Google, IBM, Deutsche Bank and McKinsey, just to be part of Modi's think-tank.

The second tier comprises around 200 short-term members — around half of them again IITians — who form the core of CAG, which has 60,000 foot soldiers from good colleges across the country.

After the emergence of Arvind Kejriwal and the groundswell of support for AAP from premier institutes, Modi plans to graft the CAG army of 60,000 into the BJP apparatus in a dozen important states. Within the next couple of months, almost 20% of BJP's active base will comprise these volunteers.

"Immediately after the win in assembly polls in December 2012, Modi started to build a platform to connect with first-time voters and youths from urban areas. CAG was launched in mid-2013 and the fact that Modi spent eight hours at an event organized by CAG on October 2 suggests how deeply the CM is interested," said a Modi aide.

The Gujarat CM is learnt to have advised Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh to take help from CAG volunteers during the assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. "The interest in these two states on what CAG can do increased after AAP's recent surge," he said.